Currently I'm responsible for Special Ops at Qualtrics, #24 on the Forbes list of America's Most Promising Companies.
I specialize in company building in which I design human systems to solve the complex problems that emerge in high-growth startups.
Previously, I was the Director of Editorial Operations & Business Development at Forbes, where I reported to the Chief Product Officer and COO, and before that I was at True/Slant, the online news startup Forbes acquired in June 2010.
I started my career as a management consultant at Bain & Company and co-founded Action First, a political consulting firm based in Washington D.C.
You can reach me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or via email at drewh (at) qualtrics (dot) com.

Why Successful CEOs Get Fired

For college basketball fans, the 1973 NCAA Championship was almost perfect. Bill Walton scored 44 points, leading UCLA to back-to-back undefeated seasons and its seventh straight national title. He missed one shot.

But it was his coach who laid the groundwork for the team’s historic run. I first learned about John Wooden as a high school student when I read a book about his Pyramid of Success. He solidified the framework in 1948—after 14 years of tweaking—the same year he accepted the head coaching position at UCLA.

It took Wooden more than 25 years to win his first national championship. He retired after the Bruins won their tenth title in 12 years, and he became the first person inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach.

I wanted to know his secret.

How The Best Keep Winning

NFL dynasties form from two ingredients. First, they couple a brilliant coach with an extraordinary player-leader, such as Lombardi and Starr, who won five Super Bowls in the 1960s for the Packers, or Walsh and Montana, who dominated the league with the 49ers in the 1980s. The worst teams have the most quarterback changes.

Second, they concentrate on homegrown talent. The Dallas Cowboys won three Super Bowls in the 1990s after drafting Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, and Emmitt Smith in successive years (1988-1990). But between 1996 and 2010, despite acquiring free agents at every turn, they failed to win a single playoff game. Developing team chemistry takes time, and it starts with the right leaders.

Like sports franchises, businesses battle to consistently outperform the competition. In Good to Great and Built to Last, Jim Collins uncovers several factors that set business dynasties apart. They’re committed to a core ideology, develop and promote promising managerial talent, and seize growth opportunities without forsaking their core. In both business and sports, winning depends on—but doesn’t end with—a strong foundation.

The Most Effective Founders Build Dynasties

The core ideology starts with the founder. A 2007 study found that public companies that retain their founders as CEOs appreciate in value at four times the market rate. These founder-CEOs cite their industry knowledge, employee relationships, and ability to reinvent the company as reasons for their sustained success.

A 2010 study, specific to software-as-a-service, corroborated the earlier conclusion: founding CEOs consistently outperform professional CEOs in terms of capital efficiency, time to exit, exit valuations, and return on investment.

Andreessen Horowitz prefers to back founding CEOs for this reason. “The technology business is fundamentally the innovation business,” explains Ben Horowitz, cofounder and Partner at the firm. “Our experience shows—and the data supports—that teaching a founding CEO how to maximize the product cycle is easier than teaching the professional CEO how to find the new product cycle.”

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff exemplifies these characteristics. He believes in the End of Software as if it’s a religion. He refuses to hedge his bets and with such devotion, he spawned a service that customers love and an engine that’s made his company the World’s Most Innovative three years in a row.

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